Last week I got a “new” cell phone. It’s “new”, not new because my brother got a new one with his new cell phone contract, and so I got his less than a year old phone; a Samsung M8800 Pixon. A touch-screen (3.2″) phone with 8 megapixel camera. My first touch-screen phone.
Of course I had to figure out if I’d like the touch-screen interface. It took little getting used to and is surprisingly nice once you figure out how everything works. The basic functions are a given, but the browser is something I hadn’t encountered on any of my previous phones yet. That too works nicely, even though the screen is so small (compared to a regular computer monitor) it’s truly something I’ll use in emergencies only.
There are a few things I’m not happy about: you have to press, not just touch, to slide items on screen or you’ll select them instead. The screen has some scratches which get annoying when you’re scrolling through items. And there are no games on the phone. Well, there were, but they were trials that sucked, so I deleted them and then found out the games that can be bought don’t have demos, yet cost around €4 a pop.
As I said, I wasn’t sure if I’d like the interface, so I copied the important contacts from my old phone to the sim and used that for the time being. Now that I’m used the new phone I decided to get the phone books synced. But how to best do that?
It turns out there are several options available, from software to hardware, some free (not the hardware obviously) others for purchase. But guess what’s the cheapest option if either of your phones can function without a sim?
Bluetooth transfers.
That’s right. I simply transferred the contacts from one phone to the next using the bluetooth connection between the two, which I had set up before to transfer the MP3s I used as ringtones (one of the benefits of buying new, never-sim-locked phones).
The only thing I could nag about would be the inability to transfer more than one contact at a time, but … well, let’s say I didn’t have to transfer too many contacts and leave it at that.
So, the moral: don’t go looking for 3rd party options if you can use a phone’s built-in abilities.
